


Thy Fearful Symmetry

by Sath



Category: Original Work
Genre: 17th Century, Blood, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Cats, Comes Back Wrong, Historical, Horror, M/M, Monsters, Shapeshifting, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-02 02:33:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16296614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/pseuds/Sath
Summary: An incompetent captain of the Dutch East India Company leads his men to their doom in the Banda Islands.





	Thy Fearful Symmetry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NeverwinterThistle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/gifts).



Jan had signed on with the Dutch East India Company because he wanted to see somewhere other than Utrecht. In the three years since leaving the Netherlands, he’d celebrated passing thirty and seeing the absolute ruin of his hopes for the Spice Islands. Even in the godforsaken place Captain Schuyler had brought them to, the air smelled of priceless nutmeg.

The Bandanese had told them the island was empty only because, like Run, it was lacking in fresh water. Schuyler insisted that the Bandanese must be lying and that they should explore, even though they were playing nursemaid to a tiger, bound for a menagerie. When the storm ran their ship, the _Friesland_ , aground the tiger escaped, swimming through the shallow water to the island.

The storm drowned three-quarters of their crew and took most of their supplies with it. Twelve survived, including their foolish captain, by escaping in the pinnace. But the storm took the pinnace’s mast and the rocky shore had damaged its sides. If they were to limp back to Fort Revenge on Ai, the damage would need be repaired.

So the survivors gathered in the trees by the shore, letting the rain and wind batter them for hours. They had no energy to fight. But when the sky cleared, they were able to make a fire, which lifted their spirits a little, though loss and despair was still foremost on their minds. Jan had never seen such a storm, or lost so many friends. And while there was food enough for a hungry man in the islands, no one could live on brine.

There was a distant ship on the horizon, growing smaller and smaller as the storm abated. Her crew must not have seen the _Friesland’s_ distress, or perhaps, God forbid, they were English. But as the fire burned low and the light dimmed, Jan thought that he’d kiss the ass of King James himself if it got him off the island before nightfall. Tigers hunted in darkness, didn’t they?

“It’ll be all right, Jan,” said Cornelis, as he cleaned his already spotless musket. He’d kept it in oilcloth during the storm, and minded its safety more than his own. Cornelis had been a mercenary before becoming a Company man, and he was a leveler head than Jan by far. “We still have enough water.”

“And what if the tiger finds us first?”

Cornelis grinned, and mimed shooting at Jan. “Then I’ll play at being a sultan.”

Jan had none of Cornelis’s optimism, though with Cornelis’s generally sanguine demeanor and Jan’s melancholy, that said little about their current situation. Nevertheless, Jan did his best to take heart.

Captain Schuyler got to his feet, waving his broad-brimmed hat a few times to catch everyone’s attention. “My men,” he said, “we are spending the night in the shelter of the trees, and set out inland tomorrow. I do not think we shall have to travel far before we find fresh water.”

“And what if we do have to travel far?” asked Pieter, who always seemed to say what Jan kept to himself.

“Hardship is good for the soul.”

Pieter sighed. A few other men grumbled as Schuyler led them into the forest, but they had all served in the Indies long enough to know when complaining was useless. As they entered the trees, Jan could swear he saw orange stripes in the shadows. Sensing Jan’s fear, Cornelis stuck close to him. Besides the comfort of their friendship, Cornelis was the best shot in the Company, as far as Jan was concerned.

One moment Cornelis’s arm was against Jan’s, in that casual intimacy he so easily affected, and the next he was being seized, dragged away before he could even scream.

“Cornelis!” Jan cried out.

The forest was empty, as if there had never been a tiger, or Cornelis. Jan tried to go after him, but Pieter held him back.

“It’s too late,” Pieter said.

Finally, Cornelis made a noise: one cut-off scream as bone snapped.

“Cornelis!”

Jan struggled, nearly freeing himself before Hendrik grabbed his other arm and held him firm. A few of the men were shooting at the trees, to no avail.

Pieter pulled Jan closer. “Jan,” he whispered. “I know you two were close. Don’t do anything stupid, like running into the trees. Cornelis is dead.”

“Damn you, Pieter,” Jan hissed.

“Don’t blaspheme,” Schuyler said, his face pale. “We already bring enough scrutiny on ourselves.”

“Scrutiny from whom?” Jan replied. “From God? Are you telling me to think of God as a creature devours Cornelis? I wish it had taken me instead!”

“Cornelis has doubtless risen to Heaven. We unfortunates still on this Earth must labor in the hope of Paradise.”

And labor they did. The next day, they started the march inland, their water already on half-rations. If they found no water and it didn’t rain, they had less than a week to live. Everyone was sweating in the heat, losing water even faster.

Jan mourned Cornelis in the moments not given over to terror. The tiger took three more of their number, striking both at night and in the day. Each time, the man had no time to scream until he’d already been dragged off. It was like the tiger wanted to let each victim cry out once, so the men left behind could hear his fate.

On the morning of the fourth day, they found their first body. It was big Hendrik, his body partially eaten. The creature had yanked off his jaw to get to his tongue, then tore into his guts. Strangely, there were signs of gnawing around his cheeks.

“More than a tiger got to him,” Pieter said, bending lower to examine the body, while Schuyler said his ostentatious prayers. “Some of the toothmarks look… blunt.”

“There’s nothing with teeth on the island but us and the tiger,” Jan replied, wrinkling his nose as Hendrik’s smell wafted towards him.

“That’s what worries me. It looks like, God forbid, a human shared him with the tiger.”

“God _has_ forbidden it,” said Schuyler, “and so we shall not speak of the unspeakable. We must bury Hendrik, as befits a Christian in heathen lands.”

At least the Bandanese soil was soft, as the men wasted valuable hours and water on digging a grave for Hendrik. Jan could admit to himself that if it were not for Schuyler’s orders, he would have left Hendrik out to rot. Who would bury Jan, when his time came? The tiger certainly wouldn’t show him the courtesy.

* * *

By the fifth day, their water supply was nearly exhausted, and Schuyler finally admitted their efforts were better spent repairing the pinnace. The ship’s carpenter was still alive, which was a mercy Jan nearly couldn’t believe. They all grimly set themselves to work, looking over their shoulder as they started the journey back to the shoreline, dragging a log behind them.

That night, Jan collapsed into his bedroll. He was exhausted, thirsty, and frightened. They had lost another one of their number only an hour before, bringing them down to a mere five. 

He would die on the island. He’d known it the moment he heard the ship’s bottom scrape against the reef. All of them were like the victims of a cannon shot, stumbling forward even as their life’s blood spilled from their wounds. Hardly anyone ever lost hope that they could survive the unsurvivable.

Jan had learned that at Amboyna. He had a clear, quick hand, and the governor charged him with taking the confessions of the twenty English, Portuguese, and Japanese men that he was torturing for a plot Jan believed had never existed. Jan had to listen to their cries and write down everything they said as they were smothered with water and had their most tender flesh burned. But even so, most of them had shuffled on their mutilated feet to their beheading with the delusion that they might be saved.

Somehow, he caught a few snatches of sleep in between his dire thoughts. Sharing a tent with Pieter made rest even harder, because the man snored.

The unlikely feeling of someone’s breath tickling his cheek startled Jan awake.

Cornelis was crouched over him, naked as an incubus. A trail of gore went from his mouth all the way down his chest, and Jan knew with utter misery that he was seeing the remains of his friends and companions. But how? It was the tiger eating people—Cornelis was no monster.

He held one bloody finger to Jan’s lips, and smiled. Except where a human mouth stopped, Cornelis smiled wider, revealing the teeth of a great cat.

“Look away,” Cornelis whispered.

Jan shut his eyes and turned his head. He heard jaws close around Pieter’s throat, cutting off his scream, then the beast dragged him outside. Jan curled on his side, holding his knees to his chest as the camp erupted into chaos around him.

Cornelis was alive. Cornelis was transformed.

* * *

As their party dwindled, so did their hopes. With the loss of the carpenter, there was no point in pretending they were doing anything but waiting to die. Schuyler spent all his time praying, and Jan wondered if it was Cornelis’s superstitious side that kept him from carrying off Schuyler.

“It’s a mercy, in a way,” Jan said to Schuyler, when it was only the two of them by the shore, “that the tiger will finish us off before anything else does.”

“God has a plan for us,” Schuyler replied. “We are the two remaining righteous men.”

Jan laughed. “God favors the beast. He has worked a miracle within it.”

As Schuyler puzzled over what Jan had said, Jan watched the tree line.  It wasn’t long before he saw the small signs of the tiger in the way the vegetation swayed, and the brief glimpse of a bright coat as the sunlight struck it. He hoped that Cornelis would not spare him a second time; dehydration was a truly awful death.

The tiger stalked forward. Schuyler, too focused on the sea, didn’t notice it silently walking through the sand until it was too late. He raised his musket and clumsily tried to prime the pan.

“Beast from Hell!” Schuyler shouted, powder spilling everywhere.

Jan wouldn’t risk any harm to Cornelis. He yanked the musket out of Schuyler’s limp hands, as the man looked at him with utter shock.

“Why, Jan?” he asked, just before the tiger seized him.

Cornelis shook Captain Schuyler between his teeth like a cat with a mouse. Then, he daintily dropped Schuyler into the sand, as if he didn’t like the taste, and went on two legs. His body changed, bones shifting and rearranging themselves, his skin making the same sickly sound as an animal being cut open for slaughter. He bled freely at every joint, and Jan knew somehow that it must have been painful beyond his imagination to turn from beast to man.

At last, Cornelis as he had been stood before him, though his mouth and throat were wet with Schuyler’s blood. Cornelis wiped at his face, clearing off the blood. He wasn’t quite himself; one of his eyes was like the tiger’s, slit-pupiled and yellow, seeming to pulse with his heartbeat, and his mouth was still too wide, his sharp teeth showing through.

“Jan,” he said, his voice not coming from a human throat. “My love. Please, don’t be frightened of me.”

“But look at what you’ve done. Look at what you are,” Jan replied, though he had no fear as Cornelis reached towards him. Schuyler was in his last moments, groping dumbly at the sand as blood poured from his bitten neck.

“I am still myself,” said Cornelis, “but the tiger takes more from me every day. He grinds my mind to nothing.”

“Why did you kill them all?”

Cornelis took Jan’s hand. “Because we deserve it. I’ve killed men on three continents. Do you carry any regrets, Jan?” Cornelis leaned closer, stroking Jan’s cheek, making him shiver. “I do. I’d be afraid for your soul, if you didn’t.” 

“How did this happen to you?” Jan asked.

“The tiger sensed the predator in me—or perhaps I sensed it in him. We’ll die together now.”

“Then why not you die with me, instead?“

Shaking his head, Cornelis replied, “If I stay much longer, I’ll hurt you.”

Jan didn’t care. What was living a few more days in misery compared to being with the man he loved? He pulled Cornelis into a kiss, heedless of his sharp teeth and the tiger’s murderous brain. Cornelis felt human, and he responded like a human, like he always had, as if Jan were someone remarkable. But at last, Cornelis shoved him away, tears gathering in his mismatched eyes.

“A ship,” Cornelis whispered, “please, I pray for a ship…”

Then he was gone, shifting back into the grim thing he’d become. With him went the last of Jan’s strength, and he sat heavily in the sand, cursing as he accidentally put his hand in some of Schuyler’s blood.

No ship would come, and Cornelis’s restraint was just a slow death. Jan decided to wait a few hours, and then go back to the trees.

Cornelis couldn’t take his life, but the tiger would.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my betas, Havisham and Gileonnen!
> 
> Title refers to William Blake's "The Tyger."


End file.
